PHILADELPHIA - It was a fast and ultimately furious start to the NHL season Saturday at Wells Fargo Center. Unfortunately for the Flyers, they began this overdue opener with one skate stuck on last year’s company line.

Start slow, catch up fast ... win or lose via the power play.

Following that old script, these Flyers of the After-2012 season fell a step short. Fighting rust and early game confusion, they watched as Tyler Kennedy and James Neal scored a pair of goals early on, then held on with the rest of their stunningly stingy Penguins teammates for a 3-1 victory.

“A disappointing start for sure,” Scott Hartnell said. “I don’t know if you want to chalk it up to not playing for eight months or whatever, but we didn’t have any legs that first period.

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“But special teams, I think, was the biggest difference.”

He noticed ... along with everybody else among a regular-season record crowd of 19,994 ... that despite a 113-day lockout, they Flyers spent too many early minutes seemingly wondering what to do next.

While that hesitation was well remedied after the first 13 minutes or so, stubborn Penguins goalie Marc-Andre Fleury - who was terrible behehind a non-existent Penguins defense in last spring’s playoff meeting between the clubs - kept the Flyers fit for not getting a tie.

“We had a lot of chances and we executed except for putting the puck in the net,” said Hartnell, part of a Flyers team that scored 30 goals in six playoff games against the Pens. “It’s a little frustrating to start like that at home. We wanted to have a good start obviously, and we didn’t do that.”

In gaining a small measure of revenge for the way the Flyers knocked them out of the first round of the playoffs last spring - in hockey parlance, that’s one labor lockout ago - the Penguins defended better than they ever did way back then.

As a result, Fleury was able to turn back 26 Flyers shots. The bulk of them were spread across five failed Flyers power plays, and considering the Penguins scored on two of their three man-advantage chances, it wasn’t difficult to ascertain what the difference was in the outcome.

“It was great; it was up and down,” Flyers defenseman Andrej Meszaros said of the pace of this relatively rust-free first outing. “They got that 2-0 lead right away, but from the second period we were the better team. We had a lot of power play chances. We just have to execute better and score on more of them, because this season is short.”

Just 47 games left and already the Flyers are chasing the Penguins. Now what?

Well, there is another game today - a noon-hour start in Buffalo. One thing about a short season, it doesn’t leave you time to dwell on shortcomings.

“It’s just a weird season,” Claude Giroux said. “No training camp or nothing. We’ll have to look at a lot of videos, obviously, and I think we have to tighten up defensively. Bryz had to make some key saves for us today.”

For starters, goalie guy Ilya Bryzgalov did get off on the right foot - playing controlled, apparently panic-free hockey. He seemed much less exercised than Fleury had to be for the bulk of the game.

Too bad the Flyers had managed to put themselves in an early hole. You know, the way they seemed to do almost all the time down the regular season stretch last year?

“It’s been a year and we’re still doing that,” Hartnell said. “You don’t want to push the panic button yet, but our starts do have to be better.”

Giroux scored the Flyers’ only goal, sliding it beneath Fleury 23 seconds into the second period off a brilliant saucer pass from Hartnell. Other than that, however, there weren’t many offensive highlights for the home team ... unless you like really hard shots angling wide and hitting the back boards.

Defensively, the Flyers were scrambled at the start.

Kennedy tipped home a shot from Paul Martin on a Penguin power play 4:40 into the game. Then at the 7:20 mark of that first period, Neal fired a fast wrist shot that beat Bryzgalov (24 saves) for a 2-0 lead.

The Penguins wouldn’t need Chris Kunitz’s empty-netter with 11 seconds left because they played like the antithesis of the Early-2012 Pens, generally taking care to clear traffic and trouble from out in front of Fleury.

The Pittsburgh goalie was also very solid through two Flyers power plays late in the third, the latter of which was short-lived because Giroux committed an ill-timed trip with two minutes left. And not long before that, a Hartnell outlet had seemed to spring Giroux on a breakaway ... but he was whistled for offsides.

Tough luck.

“Tough call for the ref there,” Giroux said. But he had said a lot on the ice.

“Obviously, I wasn’t too happy,” he added. “But it was a tough call.”

In the waning moments, Hartnell had another close moment. It was his shot that was well on its way to beating Fleury for a would-be, game-tying goal ... until Penguins winger Craig Adams altered the course of the game.

“I just went to the back door and somehow I saw the puck come through a Flyer’s leg,” Adams said. “I just stuck my stick out and hit it. Luckily it bounced out the right way so I could get it out. Kind of a little bit of good luck there.”